


The Falling Rocket

by clockworkrobots



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-12
Updated: 2012-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 00:21:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkrobots/pseuds/clockworkrobots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which, after the end of everything, Castiel and Dean talk. For once. </p>
<p>(Semi/sort of based off the Whistler painting of the same name.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Falling Rocket

**Author's Note:**

  * For [djinndreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/djinndreaming/gifts).



> Written post-7.02 but without regard to spoilers after that.

  
  
The summer air is lively around them, with the moon bright and the rustle of chatter and revelry in the distance emanating lightly down from the neighbouring fields.

The Winchesters hadn’t really properly celebrated a Fourth of July in years, always too preoccupied and ragged by the job to stand still. But tonight there is no apocalypse to stop, no world to save, no friend to retrieve from the brink of death. For the first time, in a long time, they were free.

And so here Dean was, at a house in the country Bobby had adopted as his own for the time being, sitting on the dusty wooden steps while Sam was off getting more food and beer, and Bobby and Cas away somewhere inside. It was almost too surreal, to know it was over. Castiel here again, human for the last time, and Sam safe and working his way to happy. It was good. Strangely, Dean was good.

He was even better perhaps, when Castiel came outside to join him, holding the last of the beers they had and offering one out to Dean.

“Sam informed me there would be a fireworks display later,” Castiel says, as he passes off the beer to Dean and sits down next to him.

“Yeah, sooner than later probably; it’s getting dark enough,” Dean replies as he takes a gentle swig.

It had been like this for months, since they wrestled Cas back from the Leviathans and purged them from the world once more, all quiet interaction, neither willing to bring back up the wealth of anger and emotion broiling beneath the seams. They’d hugged, after the inital battle, of course, too caught up in the relief and surprise of it all, but in the days and weeks since they’d not gone near it again, to scared to shatter this fragile thing they’d been slowly piecing back together.

But everything must come to its head sometime.

“There are many times when I regret that I will never be able to touch you like I did the first time we met,” Castiel says all of a sudden out of the silence, eyes cast to the ceiling of the sky.

He looks down at his hands (they are not his hands, except they are—they are now), fingers splayed in five points and lines running across them like a map. He _knows_ maps, he understands latitudes and degrees and the angle of the falling sun. He knows the curves and fissures of the earth because he could once clasp his wings around them. He knows seaways and stars and he knows the direction of Orion’s arrow as it shoots across the course of constellations.

He knows this and he knows Dean. But he wishes he could reach him like he once did, on that first day. He only has his human tools, now.

Dean turns to look at him curiously. “I don’t remember,” he says. “I—I remember Hell. I remember… the things I did, all of it.” He swallows. “Too much of it. But I don’t remember you.”

“You wouldn’t,” Castiel says. “Even then—especially then—it would have been too much for your mind to handle, you were already so torn and blinded by the fires of Hell. It would have been like staring into the sun.”

Dean turns took look at him then, grinning. “So you’re saying you’re like a giant ball of gas, Cas?” he supplies cheekily.

The corners of Castiel’s mouth twitch in amusement. “Yes, I suppose that’s an apt metaphor,” he replies as he gazes contemplatively off. ”I am—I was akin to a star, a shining soldier brimming in the bastions of my Father’s love. I don’t know if even I could properly explain in human language. Light, energy, I don’t know. It was _me_.”

Dean stares at him as if something had just occurred to him. “You know, you seem to be handling this human thing a lot better this time around.”

Castiel hums in response. “I don’t know if I handled it at all the last time around. The world was ending. There was too much, and I was so little. I’d had the power of a star inside me and I was dwindled down to a wisp inside a borrowed man’s body.”

“And you hated it,” Dean states. He understands enough about resentment.

“Yes.”

“How about now? I mean, I can’t say I’ve seen you go on a bender in awhile.”

“Everything. And nothing. I am not—” Castiel pauses. “I will never be human in the sense that you are, Dean, just because I am a mind bound inside mortal flesh. I am too much an angel yet. And because I am what I am, it will always be difficult for me to reconcile my impulses and my capacities,” he sets his jaw tight. “But, even restored in my power as an angel, I was still unable to protect you from Raphael."

And then there were the souls, so welcoming and inviting and for once Castiel could remember feeling full again as he hadn’t in a long time. But—“I never wanted that much power, I never wanted to become something I wasn’t. But it felt so good, Dean, to know I could shape everything. That I could _be_ everything.”

“Cas,” Dean warns, strained. “We don’t need to do this.”

“Dean,” Cas implores as he stares staunchly back. “I rather think we do. Ever since I’ve been back we’ve behaved like nothing happened, except it did,” he sighs. “I promised I would make it up to you Dean, but that means you have to let me try.”

And that sets Dean off. “What, you think this is _easy_ for me?” he says as he jumps off the step. ‘“I _mourned_ you, Cas. For fucking months you were _dead_.” The _because of me_ hangs unspoken. “You were dead and the world was going to shit again, and the last thing I had to remember you by was Sam’s broken wall and a stupid soaked trenchcoat—” he’s cut off suddenly by the explosion of lights in the distance, crackling fireworks showering down over the shadowed fields.

As Dean breathes out shakily, looking down at his feet, Castiel speaks calmly despite the booming noise in the distance. “I made mistakes, Dean, I know this more than even you. Mistakes I regret heartily because they hurt you and Sam, and so many others. But you did too, and we can’t afford to forget our trespasses against each other if we ever want to work through them. I may never get my Father’s forgiveness, but I’m willing to work for yours,” he says, want evident in his voice despite his even tone. “If you’ll let me,” he adds, as his voice finally cracks.

Dean paces in front of him, wiping his hand over his face as a large hail of lights goes off above them. Castiel eyes him in his movement, silhouetted in the glow as he sits back down and picks up his forgotten beer. “I can’t promise you anything, Cas, and my promises aren’t worth much anyway,” he near whispers as he picks at the beer’s label aimlessly. “But, uh, for what it’s worth, when I said you were like a brother to me, I meant it,” he offers, gazing out determinedly at the neighbouring celebrations.

These are not sentiments Dean admits lightly, Castiel knows, and the swell of warmth in his newly human chest is not altogether foreign either. As Dean dares a look back, he finds Cas smiling, eyes glowing in the fire reflected down from the sky. And god, Dean thinks, how could he ever lose this. “We’ll figure something out,” Castiel says softly.

And they would, wouldn’t they? That’s what family did.

Dean leans back on the porch, arms stretched behind him as he lets out a deep breath. “So is this what we’re doing now, huh? This talking thing?”

“I don’t think the alternative worked out for us very well before.”

“No, I guess not.” Dean looks up at the bursting lights above them, and then back over to Cas. “Got anything else to share before the show’s over?”

“Well,” Castiel begins. “I could say I love you in a hundred different languages but perhaps none such as well as this:” he speaks, smiling still, as he raises his right hand to Dean’s cheek and kisses him.

Above them specks of gold bristle in the black as the falling rocket falls home.


End file.
